“Harlem Air Shaft”: a True Programmatic Composition?

Journal of Jazz Studies vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 28–46 (Spring 2011) “Harlem Air Shaft”: A True Programmatic Composition? Edward Green In a 2007 article for Ongakugaku, the journal of the Musicological Society of Japan, I wrote at some length on the motivic structure of Duke Ellington’s “Harlem Air Shaft.”1 My purpose was to accent the “absolute” aspect of the music: to shed light on its bold compositional design. In this essay, I consider the question of the authenticity of “Harlem Air Shaft” as programmatic music. To resolve that question, it is important to have in mind the purely formal design of the composition, so I sketch it here. As I suggested in my earlier essay, “Harlem Air Shaft” has an abstract design analogous to a concrete experience: namely, reading a book. First, we meet a “Table of Contents,” a series of chapter titles. These are exceedingly short. Then, the chapters arrive, fleshing out and developing the hints provided in the titles. Here is how these parallels work. First we hear a 12-bar Intro divided into three 4-bar segments—respectively in A, C, and E major. The sudden shifts of key place these short segments in sharp relief, highlighting how different they are in terms of timbre, rhythm, and melodic contour. Then, a series of 32-bar choruses follows. They are all in A, and take up—now without modulation—the musical ideas presented earlier. Chorus I develops the first segment of the Intro; Chorus II, the second; Chorus III, the third; and—to round it off—Chorus IV (the “shout chorus”) develops the opening four measures of Chorus I. Thus, the opening 16 measures of the composition, considered as four separate 4-bar units, are the “titles,” and foreshadow the main “chapters” of the work as a whole. Nothing in all of previous jazz composition compares to this audacious struc- tural plan. To go even further: among the European classics, perhaps only Beethoven’s Op. 133, the Grosse Fuge, presages it. Yet unlike Beethoven’s master- piece for string quartet, for which no programmatic content has ever been suggested, “Harlem Air Shaft” is perhaps the Ellington piece most frequently thought of in programmatic terms. And for good reason—among all of Elling- ton’s works for which we have a direct programmatic statement from the com- poser, this particular “story” has been reprinted more than any other. 1 Edward Green, “Duke Ellington and the Oneness of Opposites: A Study in the Art of Motivic Composition,” Ongakugaku 52/2 (Fall 2007): 1–18. Copyright by author 28 Edward Green / Harlem Air Shaft 29 The detailed program for “Harlem Air Shaft” appeared originally in Richard O. Boyer’s serialized portrait of Ellington (“The Hot Bach”) in three consecutive issues of The New Yorker in the summer of l944. Ellington’s lengthy “storyline,” Boyer says, was given on a train as the band was traveling between gigs. A group of passengers gathered around and asked question after question about their favorite pieces, including “In A Sentimental Mood,” “Clarinet Lament,” “Soli- tude,” “Saturday Night Function,” and “Awful Sad.” Duke did not provide narrative content for any of these works; his comments merely convey the circumstances under which they were composed. We learn, for example, that “Solitude” was written in Chicago while he was waiting for a recording session to begin, and that “Awful Sad” was composed late at night on the piano. But for “Harlem Air Shaft,” he felt impelled to give a very detailed programmatic picture: “Take ‘Harlem Air Shaft,’” Duke said. “So much goes on in a Harlem air shaft. You get the full essence of Harlem in an air shaft. You hear fights, you smell dinner, you hear people making love. You hear intimate gossip floating down. You hear the radio. An air shaft is one great big loud- speaker. You see your neighbor’s laundry. You hear the janitor’s dogs. The man upstairs’ aerial falls down and breaks your window. You smell coffee. A wonderful thing is that smell. An air shaft has got every contrast. One guy is cooking dried fish with rice and another guy’s got a great big turkey. Guy-with-fish’s wife is a terrific cooker but the guy’s wife with the turkey is doing a sad job.” Duke laughed. “You hear people praying, fighting, snoring. Jitterbugs are jumping up and down always over you, never below you. That’s a funny thing about jitterbugs. They’re always over you. I tried to put all that in ‘Harlem Air Shaft.’”2 THE CONTROVERSY For many years, it has been a scholarly commonplace to assert that Ellington made all this up after he composed the music. The implication is that this narrative, however charming and engaging on its own terms, bears little if any 2 This quotation is found in the second New Yorker installment, published July 1, 1944. The entire set is reprinted in Mark Tucker, ed., The Duke Ellington Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 214–245; the quote is on page 235. 30 Journal of Jazz Studies direct relevance to the work.3 From this perspective, Ellington’s words reflect not what compelled him to compose the music, but how the piece, once composed, affected him years later. The story Boyer presents, on this account, would merely be Ellington’s delayed verbal “signifying” on a previously self-sufficient instance of music. On the surface, there is much to recommend this view. Obviously, there is a substantial time gap: the Boyer interview is from 1944, and “Harlem Air Shaft” was first recorded July 22, 1940, at the Victor studios in New York. (The record was released in late August as Victor 26731, with “Sepia Panorama” on the reverse side.) Moreover, the score—in light pencil in Ellington’s own hand—reveals that “Once Over Lightly” was the original title (see Figure 1). “Harlem Air Shaft” was written in later by copyist Tom Whaley, who used a significantly darker, heavier pencil.4 This score, from which parts were derived for the recording session, is held in the Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian Institution.5 Whaley could not have amended the score before the recording session, since he did not join the Ellington organization until 1941. A third point has been raised by revisionist critics: the Victor recording logs for this July 22nd session apparently give yet a third title for the work: “Rumpus in Richmond.” Eventually, another piece (recorded at the same session) would receive that designation, and what we now know as “Rumpus in Richmond” was put down in the session logs as “Brassiere.”6 Let us take a closer look at these matters. Firstly, “Rumpus in Richmond” clearly cannot hold up as an authentically earlier title for “Harlem Air Shaft.” To begin with, no member of the band has ever been cited remembering “Harlem Air Shaft” as “Rumpus in Richmond.” More saliently, the words “Rumpus in Richmond” cannot be found anywhere on the manuscript, or on any of the parts. By contrast, “Harlem Air Shaft” is written on both the score and all the parts. 3 For example, in the liner notes to the RCA Bluebird 3-CD set The Blanton-Webster Band, Mark Tucker writes: “Ellington once gave a detailed sensory description of the place that supposedly inspired this piece, but there is little correspondence between his words and his music.” Eddie Lambert has similar doubts. In his Duke Ellington: A Listener’s Guide (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999), page 90, he writes of Ellington’s description: “…its application to the number we know as Harlem Air Shaft must be questioned. At the time of recording, the piece was known as Rumpus in Richmond, suggesting that Duke's famous program was something of an afterthought.” 4 In my Ongakugaku essay, I wrongly asserted that Whaley used ink—so dark was his writing. 5 These can be found in Series 1 (1A Music Manuscripts), Collection 301, Box 141. 6 Given the importance of the brass throughout the work, this title could be another of Ellington’s wordplays: “Brassiere” would be “brass” plus “ear,” implying “an ear for brass.” Ellington may also be playing on the title’s literal meaning: the shape of the opening tune on trumpet, on music paper, has a relation to the shape of the undergarment. Incidentally, all the parts for this piece are marked “Brassiere.” Edward Green / Harlem Air Shaft 31 Figure 1. Score of “Harlem Air Shaft,” showing “Once Over Lightly” as original title. 32 Journal of Jazz Studies The “Once Over Lightly” matter, however, is not so easily dismissed, since the music used at the actual recording session—both the score and the parts, which were copied by Juan Tizol—display that title. As mentioned, the updating on the parts to indicate the change to “Harlem Air Shaft” was done by Tom Whaley afterwards. EARLY BROADCASTS We’ll return to this question of alternate titles a bit later. First I will investigate the supposed “time gap,” as to both the title and the attribution of programmatic content. To begin with, as mentioned before, the record was released in late August, 1940—and the physical production of records (including the printing of labels) takes some time. So, we can assume that by early August, at the latest, the ultimate title had been fixed. Yet we can push the boundary back even further. On July 29th, 1940, just seven days after the studio recording session, the or- chestra made a broadcast over the NBC Red Network from Eastwood Gardens, Detroit—and the NBC logs call the piece “Harlem Air Shaft.”7 The broadcast was live, and ran from 11:30pm to midnight.

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